It's happening RIGHT NOW!
The deadline is: NO DEADLINE JUST KEEP MAKING GAMES!!!
The launcher will continue to download games even while AT GDC!!!
Click the giant green button to sign-up/submit your game!

We're making loads of awesome and/or terrible games and taking them to GDC to blow minds with them! Over the weekend of February 25th-26th, everyone is invited to make as many games as they can and submit them here! After the event is over, we will package the games up into a launcher like we did with previous Pirate Karts! And then this March we will be showing them off in a kiosk at the Game Developer's Conference!!!

The kiosk will even continue to download games while on the show floor!

Q. Who can participate?

ANYONE! EVERYONE! If you or anyone you know makes games, or even just has an interest in making games, we would love to have you all participate! If you've never made a game before, we think Klik & Play is pretty easy to learn! but any tool is allowed and there are lots of great ones out there!

Q. What are the rules? What kind of games are allowed?

The Pirate Kode has only one firm rule: If the rules are getting in the way of you making games, disregard them! To put it another way: Cheating is encouraged.
But we have some guidelines for you if you want some direction!

Try to make each game in 2 hours or less! Don't worry if you go over, though. And feel free to prepare as much as you want ahead of time. Art, music, game ideas, even code!

Unlike the recent IGF Pirate Kart, with this one we're looking for games made for this event specifically!

It's a good idea to include what the controls are on the title screen! Unfortunately you can't really count on people actually reading the game description!

It's also really nice if people can exit the games by hitting escape.

If you don't stick to these guidelines, that's okay! WE WANT YOU AND YOUR GAMES ANYWAY!

Q. THIS IS AWESOME! HOW DO I PARTICIPATE?

Get yourself comfortable with some development environment, then when Pirate Kart Weekend arrives, MAKE GAMES LIKE CRAZY!!!

Q. I MADE A GAME(S)! HOW DO I SUBMIT IT/THEM?

SWEET! First, sign up for a Glorious Trainwrecks account if you haven't yet (you can do that here). Then click this, fill in the form, upload a game and a screenshot and submit and then YOUR GAME IS IN THE KART!

Right here! There are THIRTY games that need to get made! If you could update that spreadsheet as you start working on them and with the link when you finish, we can hopefully avoid overlap and Mike will be able to contact folks when their games are made!

The two hour limit is really more of a guideline because we want to be able to reach our goal of some two thousand games. I mean, there's nothing stopping you from going over.

Still, why not explore your options? I assure you, you'll be able to make a game in two hours with the right tools. We have two Klik of the Month events coming up before Pirate Kart V so you could use those to practice.

Are we again encouraged to basically make a bunch of "sequels" or alternate versions of the same game to achieve massive quantity? I meant to make like 20 versions of my game last time, but didn't allot enough time to do it.

For GDC, I will try to get a 32bit system to run them. After that I think I will try to do conversions. I may wait until after GDC to make it available to the general public so we can do that kind of thing.

I should also finally spring for MMF2 so I am not adding that logo-on-exit when I use TGF for converting.

So this incredibly impolite spambot decided to flood the site with countless posts of spam. In the vein of Spamusement I propose that we make games based off of and named after the text from the spambot's posts:

Late Errors
Man Marine
We Go Together
Quickly Go
Strong and Really Good
? to Keep Up With
Make Money
No Clothes
Think About How to Do
Go With
Stroll the Store

boy you won't believe how excited I am about this. I've got a shitload of crappy yet amusing game ideas. I am definitely in and while I probably won't be able to provide as much as I'd love to I will provide at least one title.

Is it possible to submit slightly altered versions of my original title since it's a pirate kart and turn 1 title into 5 in the end?

IF that's possible how do I submit this? Can I submit each piece individually and treat it as if it was an original submission OR would this be considered to be spammy as fuck (Which I think it is) and just submit ONE zip file with my different copies of one and the same game. IF I just submit it ONCE what would I name the game given the fact it would of course have different names for each different version?

Lots of questions I hope we can get cleared.

Anyways I am super excited and want to be part of this great project. I've got a very good friend of mine who is a great programmer/game maker to join as well (he hasn't singed up yet but said he wants to do something as well).

if everything goes well i should finally have everything in my life for quite a while sorted out when the time for this comes, which should bring back my motivation to a long-needed maximum.
i'm not sure that i can say the same about my imagination though, so i'm gonna need some reserve ideas then so i can put stuff out faster.

i'm gonna take at least "? to Keep Up With" and "Quickly Go"

also, how will we distribute the 25 prize-games? (which of only six are reserved atm :C)

Okay in that case I will submit 5 individual games separately which are slight alterations / sequels of the original title.
The annoying thing about real pirate karts is that it was always the same game so when I played Donkey Kong Escape or Land it was just Mario Land and I was like "damn it not this one again! Those bastards got me again "it's really frustrating and loly at the same time like "hm what might be hidden behind this name? "

Thank you for this level-headed idea. I have sent him a message on Twitter. If he replies that samusetroid's behaviour is okay with him, I will revert my edits and offer my sincere and profuse apologies to samusetroid.

It sounds like it's complicated, like there was some falling out in the relationship during or after development. Perhaps Darshell did a very tiny amount of work and samus continued on later, that's the only situation where I could understand removal from the credits but I wouldn't see that as really justified.

Sorry if I'm being overly rules-focused (I know the site's not terribly big on rules, which is great), but even if samusetroid isn't some kind of fraud, isn't submitting a game that's clearly an already-finished project that probably took considerably more than a day to develop and wasn't designed with the Pirate Kart in mind kind of against the spirit of the Pirate Kart or even Glorious Trainwrecks? Not that every single game ought to be a borderline unplayable KnP sprite-a-palooza, but it seems like a violation of something this site's about. The site and its Pirate Karts are starting to get a fair bit of attention (so much so, that I half-regret submitting a game to the Timezone Lottery Klik Jam instead of the Pirate Kart because people (GTers and others alike) are much more likely to play my crummy three-hour game in a Pirate Kart), and though we have a lot of great people who make really amazing things here, I don't know that the Pirate Kart ought to be a platform where indie developers just submit all their unpopular games (longtime labors of love included) to get a larger audience and maybe some publicity.

No offense to samusetroid, especially if he isn't pulling some kind of plagiarism. But the whole thing has me wondering where the Pirate Kart's spirit is. Not really arguing for a McCarthyesque inquisition or some kind of purity check, but I dunno. Just thinking.

We're not really worried about the trainwreckiness of the Pirate Kart getting diluted are we? :)

Jokes aside, yeah it's maybe - probably, even - against the GT/Pirate Kart spirit. Whatever that is. But I suspect that trying to nail down what that spirit is (or, God forbid, enforce it) would do more harm than good, and the harm of getting extra games that aren't true to the GT spirit is pretty much nil.

You raise good points. It's good to think about what this place is, and what it's for, and not get carried away with something we don't like just because people are talking about it. It's such a foreign idea to me, that someone might want to put up games here for the publicity, but it is one that is apparently now worth considering. I'm still trying to get my head around it, and I apologize in advance for missteps I will inevitably make while doing so. I kind of feel like I've already gotten off on the wrong foot, to be honest.

I would say that Glorious Trainwrecks is about encouraging and celebrating the weird, silly, broken, and/or personal in videogames. It is inclusive, in that we not only welcome games made by anyone, and are generally kind and welcoming to people, but also try to give them the tools to make things; both by promoting technologies that allow non-programmers to make stuff, and by removing roadblocks to creativity. Klik of the Month Klub came about not because I wanted people to make things in two hours, necessarily, but because I wanted people to make anything at all, no matter how terrible, and put it out there.

Why are we going to GDC? I feel like it's because we want to showcase the diverse voices in games, and remind people that games can be anything. Of course, it's also because it's going to be so much fucking fun to make a shitload of terrible games together and then show them off at a major industry event. But I think part of the magic is that everyone, from IGF finalists to teenagers who've never written a line of code, is invited.

(That kind of thinking makes me want to unban samusetroid and invite him to make games with us, btw.)

I fear I was probably too severe and dramatic in my tone. Sorry about that. I love the inclusiveness of Glorious Trainwrecks above all else, and it really has gotten me actively creative again outside of the Karts and Klubs. It's my favorite creative exercise, and this is maybe my favorite corner of the Internet at present.

And I absolutely agree with everything you say about why we're going to GDC. I'm so excited at the prospect of that, and the sheer madness and fun the last weekend of February promises.

For what it's worth, I'd rather we get more games made by getting more people to make games, instead of just a few regulars churning out a million variants of something they already made. More interesting variety will come naturally from getting more cooks in this kitchen.

I have been thinking a lot about the whole "quick as you can" aspect, because it seems to conflict with the "get people to make their first game" thing. Making a game in 2 hours (or less) is easy for people familiar with the tools... not so much for those just starting out. Yeah, there's a million and one game jams now, at all levels of experience, but KOTM has been a fun middle-ground. Everyone chatting on IRC is ready to help you with whatever you're working on. The deadline is just a bonus-points target, lots of people go way over. You get to see old pros make something relatively complex at lightning speed, and you get to see new folk learning how to make a yellow jogger slide left and shoot a banana at an Elvis impersonator. That's what I love.

Posting a full-length polished game on Glorious Trainwrecks for publicity is weird. Do they want to call their game a trainwreck? There's better places to promote your game (without all the self-deprecation). Diamonds can be found in the rough, but putting your diamond in the rough is going about it backwards. Glorious Trainwrecks is a workshop first and a showcase second.

Another thing. Game jams are weird when a celebrity enters, and all the reporting on the game jam is about the game that celebrity made. Someday I'd like to set up a nameless jam, where the entrant list is published, but the games are unlabeled. Or a diptych jam, where everybody makes exactly two games. I have a lot of ideas on this topic.

I'm new at Glorious Trainwrecks and I'm trying to get the philosofy behind all these events, specially the Pirate Kart because I loved this concept - a virtual cartridge as a reference to the old real cartridges with pirate collections. Then I'm working on uncommon games according to my other works. But I thought "my games need to be horrible, I need try to make horrible games, or try to make games that looks weird to me is sufficient?". I think it because I'm putting some care (specially in the drawings) in these games. Make games with care is against the Pirate Kart philosofy?

No, I'd say there are a number of games that were made with a lot of care and effort. I kind of think of the "horrible games" concept as a way to try and trick myself into not holding back. Instead of thinking, "that's a terrible idea, maybe I should just give up and do something else," I think, "that's a terrible idea, guess I'll run with it!" And because we have a supportive community that expects that not everything everyone produces will be polished, it allows you to get past that hurdle and see what comes out the other side.

But basically, if you're creating stuff for the joy of doing it, you are a friend to this community.

Blitzkast has a similar philosophy to Glorious Trainwrecks, but doesn't necessarily carry an air of trash games or encourage you to use Klik & Play (but no one's discouraging you!), in case you are curious. The philosophy is "MAK GAEMS", the very few rules are just for guidance if it's needed, much like klik of the month. http://www.thepoppenkast.com/tag/blitzkast/

So I was thinking about trying to pitch this to the bostonindies group and also the folks who were at MIT for the Global Gamejam

But what you say about regular vs more people.

The thing is, I never have had much patience for Klik N play and the like, as a coder I find it hugely disempowering (despite the lovely clipart).

Which is ok, this place seems open to my Processing artsy-ish shtuff and I love the excuse and urge to make things

So what tools should I suggest newbiews use? Like maybe I can pitch this also to the non-coders, the art and sound and designer and qa people in the industry and what not, but I don't know what tool to recommend to them

And then too I think about if I should offer to pair up, like improv comedy, have people shout out ideas for 2d ish games and try to build on those...

A modified version would be totally possible and pretty awesome! I sent Nifflas an email to make sure he's OK with such an inclusion and it seems he's very enthusiastic about the idea, so anyone with the know-how should feel free to go ahead with this!

I've sat down and made a game in under 2 hours because I felt like it and I think I won't have any time when that train wreck actually takes place cause I think that day we will throw a birthday party for a mate who is turning 30. so anyways I hope its OKAY if I already sit down and make something in ADVANCE if I just don't do a big, polished game. Overall I've made train wrecks before so I know what a train wreck is and I REALLY want to contribute something to that pirate kart.

Inside unity check your resources in the inspector, you can adjust compression (telling it to turn your wavs into oggs helps a lot) and scale down textures etc from there. Also if you build for the webplayer you can remove all that overhead and end up with a file that's only a meg or three.

Thanks for the tips. Will rebuild. Are we going to be able to embed a shared runtime in the pirate kart? My game doesn't have a ton of assets, I think it is just the runtime pushing the filesize up.

Also like an idiot, I am using the 3.5 beta, so it doesn't run on the old webplayer. I imagine I could open the game in the old version though, because there is literally nothing happening that couldn't be done with the old version

If I can figure out how to do shared runtime thing and a way for the launcher to tell which games use it, that'd be be pretty slick, but at the moment I don't have those things figured out. You probably want to post the full thing anyway so that if someone grabs your game through the website instead of the Pirate Kart launcher it'll still work.

I posted a question on the unity answers, hopefully someone will get back to me. You could also run google chrome with a command line switch for a custom plugin path. I seem to recall that there was a way to make a gui free version of google chrome with custom plugins, and that might be a solution as well.

I am kinda interested in this because I want to make like 5 more unity games, but if they are going to be 20 megs a pop, then there is no way I am going to do it.

The full pack including standalones for win / mac as well as the standard webplayer, and the google naCl version has already been posted, so at worst that will be there.

i think im gonna do the game first this time around just to be safe, though i hope i can squeeze the opening movie in there. it just won't make sense otherwise. the sheer epic stupidity of the opening validates any and all plotholes i'll then introduce.

yeah it was pretty obvious this wouldn't last long. i'll likely revert into my original plans for this.

i might also just post it standalone non-kart. it was og supposed to be for the upcoming kotm but i'll be on a trip then and i haven't really done anything.

if i had enough experience in something else than knp/gm i'd surely be all over this, but i don't and i'm pretty crap at the genre it was gonna be.
i guess i just don't want to make big joke games anymore until i get real because it's about time i start getting. i'm incredibly prone to being blinded by "epic ideas" still but nowadays i come to senses pretty fast. (yie-ar kung-fu 3 as an example of not)

but there's always the future though! will i become an amazing dev and be able to put out these "epic joke games" alongside serious stuff, or will i become jokegamecorrupted?

as soon as i got into the fighting parts everything went unironically shitty
the point of the series was to throw whatever the fuck i felt like into a big ball of dumb but they actually needed to be genuinely good to go with the "seriousness" of the mozarts and the fact i wanted them to be really kickass anyway.
i'm pretty sure i still used up every last one of my ideas on yakf3 though and keep forgetting it on a monthly basis.

dunno just one that doesn't have yie-ar kung-fu taking place not too long before infomation

still doesn't explain what aladdin and yellow runner (aladdin refers to the yakftimes iirc) are doing in hell (they hadn't been there for too long, yr said he was just testing and aladdin was gonna get out pretty soon. also when bartender opens all the jail cells i put yellow runner as one of the random generated escapees. theres all sorts of inconsistency. bartender was the one who said the first cursewords at the end of 2 but i think that was supposed to be mozart and i didn't care.)

I've to admit the first games are very good and high quality. Once the trainwrecks kicked in the dude got super pissed off and just didn't get it. I think it's bloody hilarious to see someone get kind of trolled by lousy games and just getting angry because he doesn't get it.

another thing people don't get is THE SHIFT KEY. clickteam's love for the SHIFT key is confusing the hell out of people so I feel like using SHIFT even more now for extra lulz

anyways i just felt like addressing this. i think a trainwreck... well IS a train wreck if its somehow awful but playable and enjoyable and it isnt really a trainwreck if it's just a lovely and well done mini game which it seems to me people who don't know trainwrecks are expecting.

a lot of the igf pirate kart was games people had already made without limits or "trainwreck mindsets" so some of them were actually serious games or at least mostly inoffensive generic indie poop

i've been mulling a lot over the "trainwreck spirit" (read more) and stuff lately.
on the other hand i don't really have a problem with the small games such as this,
but i've always found the true meat of the site to be in joke games and either their almost artistic hilarity or bizarre atmosphere (sometimes both).
lately i've felt though that the joke aspect has gotten more forced (i'm very guilty) and that the atmosphere has mostly been lost. if i ever actually can put this into words i'll talk more.

also i sense the problem getting possibly much worse with this kart yet there being no way to prevent it
as for what the cause actually is, im guessing it has to do with glorious trainwrecks getting "popular" and newer people not understanding the site,
let alone in the way i or someone else look at it.

(for some kind of example as to what i'm talking about, the Acupuncture bits up there strike me as being the complete opposite of the point of GT.
the author clearly intended them as "joke games", but they are modeled after the worst indie circlejerk genre and don't actually contain any other joke than them being bad and annoying. (fact: most of the time "ironically" making something stupid actually isn't funny) worse, it's split up into ten games which is really dumb since they will devalue the novelty of the high game count(imo it'd be the best to NOT do the 10 versions of games thing, unless you can make it really funny. even then though it'll probably be better than these games))
(if you're reading this ben, no offense. i just simply don't like them)

people might get this already, but i probably should confess clearly and openly that i'm an indie hater

however, it just happens to be that only indies/other amateur developers will ever do the joke/bizarre thing, and that you don't really need to be a great/100% nonretarded developer in order to do it. (though a lot of potential on the joke side is still lost. thankfully the full potential is reeeeallly high so losing some isn't so bad.)

jesus it's so hard to want to become not only the most serious game developer in the world, but simultaneously try to deal with my jokegame darkside and use it for good.
and if it's hard now, just wait for the future

What ended up happening with the IGF Pirate Kart was that a fair number of people who made their living writing games put some of their less successful games in it, rather than entering them on their own into the IGF. (I rather enjoyed subverting that trend by including games that I made in QBASIC when I was twelve.) We're not exactly sticklers for "rules" here, but I think that Mike has tried to make it clearer this time around that the GDC Pirate Kart isn't about that kind of thing.

I should bug Mike about the possibility of streaming a GDC Pirate Kart ReactionCam live from the expo floor.

the livestream of the mit gambit lab playing the gdc pirate kart was a far more understanding playthrough of the pirate kart. They seemed to understand the spirit of the kart a bunch more. I wish that there was a recording of it, because it was genuinely funny and insightful.

I have two or maybe three expo passes that didn't go in the Kickstarter! There's no use in them going to waste!
Not promising anything yet, but if an expo pass would make the difference in whether you or someone you know goes to GDC, email mike at meyermike dot com about it!

there's only twice as much people signed up currently than PK2 and 2012 is nearly 4 times that

it will boost when the actual event starts though, but somehow i think it'll be not as easy as it seems. i believe that most non-regulars won't really do much games and it's up to us to ONCE AGAIN TAKE THE IMPOSSIBLE PLUNGE INTO GLORY!

Not for all of the games, mind you. Just those that even have some kind of life count or something, and even then for those where it does have a purpose. The trainer creation thing is quite easy if you use some tools (good ol Magic Trainer Creator comes to mind, and OSDM which I'm using for cracktro apparently does have a trainer feature, but bit harder to include than MTC).

Did you know if you type "pirate cart" (with or without the quotes) into Google it comes back
Did you mean: "pirate kart"
AND DO YOU KNOW WHY IT DOES THAT??
Probably 'cause of this:http://www.piratekart.com/igfpiratekart.html the 2012 IGF Pirate Kart...

The community at GloriousTrainwrecks.com, with their 5 year tradition of the Klik of the Month, the original(?) 2 hour game jam, made some waves at the IGF... (it put the Karters and Trainwrecks founder Jeremy Penner in IGN's Top 30 Games People of 2011 list)

AND NOW IT"S TIME TO RELOAD AND SET OUR SITES HIGHER:
THE GDC AWAITS

The gang has kickstarted a kiosk on the GDC expo floor! All over the world folks are gonna MAKE A KRAZY AMOUNT OF GAMES and BLOW THE GDC AWAY WITH A SIMPLE MESSAGE: MAKING GAMES IS A GAME ANYONE CAN PLAY AND SHOULD.

How can you join in? BY MAKING AS MANY GAMES AS YOU CAN THE WEEKEND OF FEB 25-26 2012 AND SENDING THEM IN -- see http://www.piratekart.com/ for more info

BUT EVEN BETTER-- my ever patient sweetie Amber has agreed to let me host a gathering that weekend at our place in Arlington. We probably have room for 4-6 jammers, 6-8 if they like each other. Jamming is more fun when it's social!

The infamous Darius has said he should be good for coming over and making a few games. If there's an overwhelming response to this we might seek a larger venue, but for now, if you're interested email me at kirkjerk at gmail and come hang out and make games and be awesome!

Details: I live in East Arlington. Easy walk from Alewife. I'll plan to be jamming at least from like 10-midnight Saturday and 11-5 or 6 Sunday. Email me if your interested and I'll get you address and phone info.

Admittedly I'm gearing this more at Koders who feel like they can pull together some little game play mechanic in around 2 hours (or a bit more, no one is really timing you) on their own. The ancient "Klik and Play" no-code-game-maker was the original choice for the site... Personally I use "Processing", a lot of people use GameMaker and some such...
(I think with future jams, we might gear this more to helping people get up to speed. And if you're on the bubble but know some kind of tool a bit, you should give it a try... the original Klik of the Month 2 hour guideline is meant to free people from perfectionism in favor of AWESOMETERRIFICISM.)

So let me know if you want to stop by and hang and enjoy people's creativity -- AND YOUR OWN!
Even if you can't make it, say a word if you might give it a shot at your own place and your own time, I'm trying to help get Boston into the spirt of GUNS BLAZIN' GAME JAMMIN

For Pirate Kart II, 41 people signed up for email notifications. 102 people made 529 games.
For Pirate Kart V, if we can get 156 people signed up for email, then 387 people will make 2012 games?

What if we make more than five games per person? What if we have multiple professor_scissorses or Kitoaries? Maybe we have one person ruthlessly remix everything in the Kart to add more games? Or would that be too much fluff? Or do we want fluff?
We've roughly nine days to go. Can we collect six signups per day?

Do we count early submissions as games? Can we do stupid extrapolations from 64 pre-submitted games?

I'm personally going to aim to make 4 times as many games as last year (24). I don't think I'll succeed. I'm also encouraging everybody I know to contribute something to boost numbers. Board and card games are A-OK, right?

Looking back at PKII I don't feel like my submissions were diversified enough. I mean, I made a word processor in Klik & Play which is awesome, but then I remixed that to make other office suite "programs" that weren't really worth playing. I also mainly made parodies of other people's games. Did it drive up the number of games? Sure, but I wanna make more interesting stuff. My PKII submissions were kinda devoid of interesting game-y ideas.

I personally like qrleon's collection of PKII submissions and my wish is that he'll come out of hiding to make games for PKV as well.

Right now I have a text file of ten "good" game ideas and nine "shitty" ones, and I may add some more ideas so that hopefully my submissions will be more interesting this time around.

Right now, all spam filtering is done manually; all of the automated solutions I tried had an unacceptable level of false positives, and enough false negatives to mean that I had to do manual spam filtering anyway.

Someday I'll rewrite the site using a more modern framework and use a real antispam solution. For now, it is what it is.

The only thing you lose by cheating is the absurd fun of real-time feedback on making a game. Making a game for an event at a non-appointed time is just "cheating at hanging out with friends". Making games with everybody else on IRC is more fun, but we realize that asynchronous hangouts is the norm for most global internet communities. Make games constantly forever!

It was 31 when I first looked. Given that the doc is totally freely editable, I think people have just been adding ideas. I see no reason why we shouldn't make them all if we feel like it, but obviously the first 30 should be top priority.

The Glorious Trainwrecks game upload form has a maximum file size of 200 MB, so that's currently the limit.

Larger games probably will get played less in the launcher, just because if they have to wait very long folks will just hit cancel and go play a different game. I would like to make it do some kind of automatic background downloading, but I don't know if I'll get that in before GDC.

One of the cool features of the launcher is that it will continue to scrape glorioustrainwrecks and add games to the list even while it is running AT GDC!

I really should mention this more clearly on the website/event page, because I think it's pretty cool!

I mean at some point people maybe we should ask folks to stop submitting to this one and instead direct attention to a cool new event that hasn't been planned yet. But at least until after GDC submissions are wide open!

how is this going to work technically? so you coded something that can grab a game from this very page and then insert it into the loader and use the provided thumbnail and provided title? seriously i am wondering how this going to work technically. it probably wont at all and turn out to be very nonfunctional but then im just a negative nagger. to be honest i doubt there will be submissions going IN while GDC is going ON (well there probably might be 3).

still that sounds super awesome and stuff.

i am MOST excited about the web cam if you get one AND looking forward to Youtube Let's Play videos where people will be like "WTF IS THAT SHIT?!"
super bonus points if you can get clickteam to play those games (since they are at GC) and record them while doing so. that would be the coolest thing EVER in klik history.

On the technical part:
It works! It actually uses a json thing SpindleyQ set up for more-direct access to the games. It definitely beats scraping the html. You can try a slightly-old build here: http://kart5.s3.amazonaws.com/piratekartv.zip
I still need to stress-test it to make sure it is really ready, and probably I will have to make some small changes, but I don't expect anything major will come up. A few games will probably require special-casing when the launcher can't tell which exe/bin/swf/html/whatever to use. I have a system set up so I can fix them as they are found and the kart should auto-update to get those changes if it can reach the internet. All of the games submitted so far seem to work*! Even the Knytt stories and zcode games! I'm a little worried about UDK, XNA, or other games that may require installers. We may just have to say the launcher won't support that.
This does remind me though that I need to make more concrete plans for the hey-Mike-my-game-doesn't-work-in-the-launcher hotline.

I half-expect there to be a jam at GDC whose games get added to the kart, but we'll see! If we don't get any it's no big deal. I still wanted this feature so that I wouldn't have to add games manually like I did for the IGF Kart.

About the webcam:
The webcam part is not looking like I will get it ready in time, what with the launcher, Kickstarter stuff and GDC-related stuff I still need to take care of. And of course I want to actually take part in the event this weekend too!

I have a webcam someone offered to let me borrow, but actually setting up the stream and installing appropriate software is stuff I haven't figured out yet. If someone knows how to do that stuff and can make a quick how-to or point me at a tutorial or something I'll try and get it working!

* at least on the machine I will be putting in the kiosk (running 32bit WinXP)

32bit WinXP is the best system (so i still use it at home. screw that win7 laptop). im on OSX at work and it makes me furious i cant play trainwrecks. hell ive even fiddled around with vine but i wouldnt get stuff to work. luckily ive also got a win xp 64 bit machine which is still a bit annoying but i just installed tgf 2 newgrounds edition on it so everything is almost fine (ignoring the fact i cant run most of my other software i use but whatever).

enough complaining about different systems (i really don't know what to do once I have to give up win xp 32 bit in a few years).

haha the music in the loader is just epic. i know the girl from ipanema (? spelling my only weakness) is a classic for pirate karts but this version is simply the best.

what exactly is party mode? ARGH i was suddenly trapped inside warning old man and couldn't get out of it. alt + F4 or esc didn't do the track and when i switched through programs it automatically got focus again so i had to wait until the game would close itself. thats really annoying and will put people off.

so anyways epic work so far. are you gonna put screenshots next to the games or would this just load too much and kill anything because of DATA OVERLOAD?

anyways the loader is super awesome. that way i got to play a lot of games I hadn't tried yet and I just laughed so hard. one thing I would like to suggest: can you give me a direct link to the trainwreck page of the submission as well? like I just played the highly dangerous life of nitroglycerin man or whatever and I just had to comment on it (it's such a pain in the cock but hilarious at the same time simply because of being a royal pain in the cock). the problem is: i first had to hunt down that game and it was on page 4 of the submissions so if i had a direct link in the pirate kart it would make commenting way easier and a great outlet to tell the creator how much I've just "hated" (joke) his game ;)

I actually just bought this laptop and I wiped win7 64 off it to install XP. It's a pain in the ass to do that because you need to do some weird stuff with getting drivers into the install disc, but anyway I have a legal 32bit XP running on my 64 bit processor now. But anyway now that I've done that much I can hopefully keep XP going a few more years.

I think I am going to rename party mode to "shuffle". It is based on iTunes's old party shuffle mode. The idea is you get a random selection and you can choose from those or skip it. This version is missing the "play", "play again", "skip game," and "reshuffle" buttons that hopefully make it make more sense. I'm thinking of locking the GDC version to just the shuffle view, but not sure yet.

RE: Screenshots in the list: That was originally the plan, but the UI framework I went with isn't very flexible and it's gonna be tough to do that in the time I have left :(

what web cam do you have and what problem do you have? can't you just use http://www.justin.tv/
i know http://www.justin.tv/ has an iphone app so you can stream stuff via your iphone to the world wide webs
so yeh they probably also support web cams on your computer and so on but let me know what exactly the problem is you are having or what exactly you are planning to do and so on because i would REALLY LOVE TO FIGURE THIS OUT

i just want the web cam thing so BADLY so I will try to put all my mental energy into this and ask people at work who are smarter if you can give me exact questions I can find answers for I will look on the web and ask people and I am sure a lot on trainwrecks know the right answers as well :)

what in the F
physical Pirate Kart jams?!
seriously where is this going on and so on. there are A BUNCH OF PEOPLE on different LOCATIONS gathering to make trainwrecks this weekend?
who and where and so on. tell me more like WHAAAT?!

I think I'm probably more panicked about time than I need to be. I'll start experimenting a little and see if I can like have justin.tv running as another user so that people at the kiosk can't see or close that window (and more importantly so that it can't interfere with the way the launcher handles web games...)

Does it also record the stream? It would be cool to put a timelapse version on youtube after the conference.

UPDATE: So getting the live stream working is no problem, but capturing the screen is turning out to not work when chronolapse or whatever program is running as the kiosk user, so there's either a user-permisisons thing going on or a explorer.exe-has-to-be-running thing going on, so I don't think I'll be able to capture the actual screen :(

Well I think your main concern is that people will close the screen capture isn't it?

I mean can't you just use camtasia (this is what I use) or fraps running in the background just capturing everything?

the problem I see: I don't think those can stream anything so you will record a big file on your hard drive.
now if its running the whole day and screen capturing the whole day I think you will end up with a BIG ASS FILE (thats the only problem I see).
maybe you can run windows in a mode so users aren't allowed to close programs ie won't be able to close Camtasia.

I also thought about using a program Team Viewer or any remote desktop software. at work we are all using OSX and I can access anyone's screen remotely without them noticing and see what they are doing. hell I could even record what they are doing on my machine.

so maybe you can get the laptop connected with another computer and just use some remote control or VNC to spy on it and record stuff from it?

so yeh im just throwing RANDOM ideas out here right now but I think if we all BRAINSTORM and throw ideas out we can come up with a good and working solution in the end.

I tried xsplit and chronolapse and neither would actually record anything when run as the kiosk user (they lock up completely in fact). They work fine for the admin account so hopefully it's just a permissions thing I can fix easily! It'd be nice if there wasn't a window up they can mess with but I probably can live with that if I can just get these programs to work.

Can the launcher handle traditional games i.e. card or board games that might need to be in the form of image or text files? I'm trying to get almost everyone I know to contribute one thing to this and for some those options would be easier.

Also screencapture programs like Camtasia can slow things down a lot while I've never had any problems recording hardware heavy 3d games with Fraps. That's what Fraps is made for- capturing games so you should give Fraps a try.

Will the launcher be able to run DOS applications? I have a tool that exports to both Win3.1 and DOS, but the DOS export option is the only one with fullscreen lowrez scrolling. Just wondering if I could use that option!

ive got the same thing planned for a month now. if its still funny and creative all is good id say. just note: we already have +100 games and there will be even more tomorrow and in the following days. im not even sure if anyone who downloads the pirate kart will EVER play all those games.
you know what it's like with long text on the internet = tl;dr
i get the feeling we will have: too many games - didn't play
basically TOO many crappy games so if someone really puts a bunch of effort and work into their games and no one is gonna see that / play that. aw man i really feel sorry for those. thats why the loader needs the screenshots.

+++++++++++++++
the loader needs a screenshot of the game in it - people judge books by their cover
++++++++++++++

After GDC is over, I'd say it's probably time to call it done and move on.

But there was supposed to be a Timezone Lottery Klik Jam this Saturday, and I'm like, whaaat? No, that's crazy unthinkable. No one should be submitting games to a Timezone Lottery Klik Jam when GDC is NEXT WEEK.

It seems like a lot of people are sneaking in bigger, serious games they've been working on so they can get them publicity (mostly people who just registered and made a hit-and-run submission). I think one of the games is actually a full six years old.

They are staying in because
A) it's a terrible way to get publicity anyway
B) it's somewhat against the spirit, but it's within the bounds of what I've said is allowed when people ask me
C) I'm sure no one has the time or inclination to enforce the spirit of the event
D) I think it's best if the spirit of an event is allowed to be the result of what people do in the event, rather than something imposed upon it.
and perhaps most importantly
E) given what I've been saying about wanting as many people involved as we can get and trying to be inclusive, it'd be a real dick move to kick a game out of the kart

I think the thing to do would be to give them a polite reminder that we are mostly looking for stuff made FOR this kart and encourage them to make something new!

I remember there was one comment in there about how it was becoming scary that people were submitting games just for publicity, but I promise all I did was some eyebrow raising. In any case I'll be eating crow for a bit.

i didn't intend to be straight out rude either (and others who think these being submitted are weird likely thought so too)

i predicted, among other things, that something like this will happen in my earlier posts and it just ticks me off to see it come true. he obviously didn't read much what the site is actually about, so i can't really help it if he then leaves all confused and shit when some of the more "rude" members as much as ask "wait wtf?" (ps. i don't actually know did it go worse and how much after i went to sleep)

edit: also, i know that they asked you (mike) about stuff which lead to the rpgmaker games being posted, but where did the ssb clone guy come from? that one's honestly pushing it if anything.

There's no need to leave nasty comments on their submissions, it reflects poorly of us as a community. At most, we could ask if the text on their game's page that says the game was "created for event X" is actually true, or if they're even aware the submission page is set up to make that claim. We could repost one of the event's guidelines: "Unlike the recent IGF Pirate Kart, with this one we're looking for games made for this event specifically!" But getting angry is pointless and removing their games is petty. The ideal response goes like this:

HI! It sure looks like you put a lot of effort into this game, which is great! It's always a pleasure to see a game developer making a real labor of love. But you might not be aware that the emphasis of this website is on new and original games developed exclusively for Glorious Trainwrecks, that have not been previously published elsewhere. If you're looking to get more people to play a game you've already made, there are a lot of better places to advertise it! Glorious Trainwrecks is more of a workshop than a showcase. I'd recommend submitting your game to places like TIGsource, TIGdb, pixelprospector.com, indiegamemag.com, playthisthing.com, or indiegames.com . These websites are better suited to getting your game the publicity it needs, but if you'd like to try making some new games with us, feel free to stop by anytime!

I guess this is partly my fault. I went on IRC and lamented the fact that people were submitting larger, long-term productions. My reasoning was that this was a game jam, not a free publicity event, and that the submitters didn't take the time to become familiar with how the Kart and its launcher worked.

Just to be clear, I did not facilitate or instigate anything in the way of rude attacks against the submitters. I hate hive-mindedness.

I don't think the games are unwelcome on this site, though IMHO they aren't exactly a match for the Pirate Kart V. I also don't think they would fare too well on sites like, say, TIGdb. Hobbyist, "hanging out with friends" game-making is our domain. What we really ought to do is improve how we handle games that aren't associated with any event. KotM is nice and all, but sometimes you are working on something bigger yet staying true to the hobbyist game-making spirit and it doesn't really fit in a monthly event. We could use a better system for handling these kinds of games. Like, a gallery or something. Currently the closest thing we have is the Development Diaries and that doesn't work very well (in addition, it's kind of filled with cobwebs at this point). And if you use the Games system and submit a game without affiliating it with an event, the only way to find it is to either view the user's profile (which you'll have to get a link to from elsewhere) or look in Recent Changes, where the entry will be buried among comment entries and node diffs, etc. and scroll off the first page within a short period of time.

Yeah, I hope my Heroes Realm game didn't come off as an attack (I'm afraid it was since the original was apparently deleted). :(
The long elaborate descriptions attached to those games were cute, and I wanted to ape their aesthetics and make a corrupted/haunted version of them. I meant it as playful teasing at worst. I really don't want to drive anyone away.

Again, apologies if I touched off anything nasty. I was in a bit of a grumpy mood, and the last thing I want to do is cast this place in a bad light. I agree with the hive-mindedness thing, it's discouraged me from participating in a number of sites. I see what you mean about those games sort of occupying a weird ground that the indie "scene" doesn't really respect. I guess I just got too caught up in the specifics of the event.

...I still do think the idea of making awful ripoffs of those games is funny though. :)

I posted a reply saying that I obviously misunderstood what this is all about and deleted my game out of respect for what you guys are trying to accomplish. Most of games don't fit this mold so I deleted my entry. Of course, that deleted my reply. Oops.

Hi, I'm the one who mentioned Pirate Kart V on RPG Maker sites and encouraged people to post their games, and also the author of one such long game that was submitted. Sorry if that was inappropriate. Some explanation:

I found the project when it was mentioned in a news article at Penny Arcade, and all the information I had about it was what was in that article, plus the rules that are on the front page of the pirate kart website. One of the rules was a 2 day time limit but another rule was that you could break any of the rules. I wasn't sure how big a deal that particular rule was, but figured my game would be rejected if it wasn't okay, so it couldn't hurt to submit it. I guess there are varying levels of "okay" though; apparently it's technically allowed but maybe it's uncool. If you guys would like me to, I will not only remove my game but also make follow-up posts to my original posts on rpgmaker.net, rpgrevolution.com and hbgames.org and let people know that posting their existing games isn't really in the spirit of the event.

For what it's worth, though I can't speak for gamesfreak, felipe, or ocean, I didn't post my game to get publicity. I posted my game because I was hoping people would enjoy playing it.

This is the first event at GTW I've participated in, and I'm afraid that I rather failed to bang out my game as quickly as I had hoped. <1 day became a week, but it's done :P I don't think I'll squeeze in any others this time around, though perhaps for the next event I can get my game-making going a little faster and looser.

Also, as I'm new I would just like to say that I find the style of this community very refreshing and the scratchware spirit on display genuinely inspiring.

Because we enjoy making those games, and this site celebrates and promotes the joy of making games :)
Things like polish or professionalism don't matter much here. What's important is creating an environment where anyone, regardless of their technical abilities, can make beautiful and personal games.

most of the games follow the 2-hour "rule" and tbh you can't really do anything high-quality in that time, but it's fun to see what some can do in that time! (although i've been mostly using this as a jokegame repository and regularly take overtime to do something a bit bigger but no more quality. i want to try to change this in the future.)

Making jokey and half-serious games keeps with the scratchware spirit of Glorious Trainwrecks. Of course, there are also more serious games being made for this site. As Fabian said, it's really more about making whatever you feel like making and not having to worry about conforming to some sort of standard outside of your own.

Also, on the topic of polish: I'm personally a fan of "silly polish" - if you don't know what I'm referring to, just play some of qrleon'sgames.

This is a workshop. Terry Cavanagh once made a silly quick little game for this site in 2 hours. He thought the mechanic he was playing around with was interesting enough to make a larger game from. So he made VVVVVV. This is a test bed, a proving ground, a rapid prototype extravaganza. Complete uninhibited experimentation, which can lead to "higher quality nonsense" down the road if you like what you came up with.

I'm not planning on ever turning anything from here into a full-fledged game of any kind, I've got plans on what kind of serious bigger games I want to make. However, I think my trainwrecks are beginning to lack the fun part. I don't even mean any kind of serious design. For example, Forest Racer is probably one of my truest trainwrecks. The less-than-5-second races are just so perfectly hilarious somehow and I don't even know!
I honestly see trainwrecks as their own art itself, separate from any "serious" games, which is what enables me to be the "indie hater" I said I am but at the same time be here in the midst of many of the said indies! (that might be worded kinda badly, but I'm bad at that and always have been)

I feel like I've lost something as time has gone on (and I'm very sure that this is not just in my trainwreck spirit). Stack the Cups may be funny, but it just doesn't have the same charm as something like the ridiculously long and narrow final track in Forest Racer or the extremely glitchy platform movement in Pyramido Plunder, or the so retarded it's brilliant House Monopolier.

One thing I've noticed is that I don't do much actual gameplay anymore in my wrecks. Stack the Cups just builds up to and jumps the shark at the transformation, Beautiful Experience 3 and 4 were mostly cop outs to increase my game count, and Fishing is funny maybe once. But I don't think I can just be like "okay now I'm gonna do a gamey wreck" and do a "true trainwreck" again. No. I gotta get my shit together. I gotta find that lost something.

I'm working on finding that something though, and I'll keep making 'wrecks, and some day, they shall become glorious again!

Yeah there might be a possibility that I'll do something shortish inspired from a trainwreck, but otherwise I've already got enough ideas on what kinds of things I want to try in what genres for bigger small games. My big game dreams are a whole different story. They are probably some of the more overambitious stuff around and with at least two of the currently three of them I wish to leave a mark that lasts.